voicetest | Setting: Spaaaaaace!

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Setting: Spaaaaaace!

Jacob Taylor is hard at work in his starship's armory. He's in charge of maintaining an impressive array of assault rifles, heavy pistols, grenade launchers, and other implements of destruction and defense. Jacob's aware that the lives of his friends and crewmates might depend on the condition of these weapons. It's a job he takes seriously, and it's a job he's good at.

When your character enters, Jacob turns away from his electronic console to greet them.

"Hey. Can I help you with something?"

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"I get it." Jacob frowns. "Money talks. Some things don't change no matter where you're from."

A few years ago Jacob learned that all organic civilization in his Galaxy had been orchestrated by a malevolent ancient race of machine-gods responsible for millions of years of cyclic genocide, and Isaac's world still sounds more depressing than what he's used to. Jacob can handle the idea of a dark future looming overhead, the threat of an imminent galactic harvest, but the lifeless, desperate universe Isaac has described sounds more like a dark present. It's especially hard for him to imagine a galaxy where all the aliens are dead.

"So this Church- are they the reason you're not comfortable without a weapon? Sounds like they've caused a lot of trouble." Jacob asks the question directly, yet hopes he's not stepping on any of Isaac's graves in doing so. It's hard to know what's okay to talk about and what's off-limits when comparing entirely different universes.

He flounders, making a tensed noise in the back of his throat. It almost comes rushing out all at once but he stops himself. He wants to tell Jacob, but there's something in the back of his mind that tells him if he talks about what happened... then somehow it would bring an outbreak here.

"Look, you're..." he brings up the arm he'd installed an 'omnitool' on, flipping through it looking for a program that can be used to draw or record physical motion. "I don't mean to overstep my bounds on this ship, but you and your company are pretty deep in paramilitary, secretive shit, right?"

Isaac had been on enough military ships with sensitive information on them to smell a jump in paygrade from the other side of the deck, and Jacob's vessel felt like it was humming with info he wasn't supposed to look too closely at. Why he's asking, however, is for the sake of putting his mind at ease.

"Officially, I can't confirm or deny something like that," Jacob says. Then he shrugs. Jacob Taylor can keep a secret when it's important, but he will never be the Galaxy's most reliable devotee of regulations and red tape. There's obviously something big on Isaac's mind, something painful and frightening, and Jacob has dedicated his life to confronting painful and frightening things. "But off the record? The fact that I have to say 'off the record' should answer the question."

"Yeah, I get it." He finds a TouchDraw or similar program, activating it, and a rectangular, grid screen pops up above his arm in glowing orange, awaiting input. He presses one finger into it, and a thick glowing line surrounds it.

By memory, he draws out the too familiar double helix shape, first one half, then the other. The image itself makes him pause, the motion of drawing it taking him back to the time before. His eyes glass over, and before he can stop himself, he's already drawing out one of the symbols that covered the marker's surface. As he lifts his finger to draw another, he snaps out of it with a shake of his head.

Swallowing roughly, he looks back to Jacob, offering the finished screen in front of him. "Have you or anyone you work with ever seen something that looks like this?"

Edited 2014-04-17 23:11 (UTC)

Jacob leans in slightly to get a good look at the screen, then shakes his head. The symbol is faintly unsettling, reminiscent of flames or twisted blades, but he doesn't recognize it. Jacob looks away from the screen to focus on Isaac. The look on his face while he was drew that... Jacob's not sure what he's seeing in this man, but he doesn't like it.

"Doesn't ring any bells. It looks like an icon of some kind. Is that their logo or something?"

"It's...." Shit. He doesn't know how to explain it all at once. "It's the icon of the Church." Maybe he shouldn't explain it. It's irrational, but he can't get over the idea that talking about it will invite the same disasters to this universe. "...But it's also this artifact. It's incredibly dangerous because it does things to people's heads. The Church was the one going around to different planets and digging them up--exposing people to them."

Keeping things vague helps him feel a little better about talking about it. "They claim it's part of their religion, but they really have... no idea what it's truly there for." His eyes are glazing over again, but this time he's able to fight it back, his expression growing stern. "Yeah. They're why I don't feel comfortable without a gun."

"Well, you should have one soon. Cryo ammo, like I said. Could help you feel a little safer." Jacob looks over at a nearby weapons rack, scanning it for likely candidates, then looks back to Isaac and the sinister icon on the screen. Buried artifacts, doing things to people's heads... A tingle runs down his spine. How much has Isaac been exposed to that kind of insidious influence?

"Do me a favour, though," he says. "Talk to Yeoman Chambers about what you just told me. Especially about those artifacts. She's... the ship counselor. I'm not trying to cross any lines here-" He holds up his hands, a gesture of respecting Isaac's space. "But it sounds like you've been handling some real shit. Might be you could use some comfort that you can't get from a gun. Know what I'm saying?"

He hopes Isaac does. If there's a chance the engineer has been exposed to something in his own universe that's comparable to Reaper indoctrination, Jacob is not going to arm him until it's sorted out.

Ugh. The ship's resident overly friendly shrink. It's not as though Isaac has no respect for mental help professionals at all. But there's something about how forward miss Chambers is that puts him off. It's probably his past experiences in a straight jacket talking there, though. (That's one thing he's not going to breathe a word about on this ship, that's for sure.)

"Yeah..." he tries not to sound too dismissive, but a bit of a sullen expression crosses onto his face. "I'll drop by CIC for a chat later. ...Thanks for taking the time to hear me out yourself, by the way." He perks up a little, flashing the man a brief bit of open gratitude.

"No problem, man." Jacob's not surprised to see the sullenness. He'd act the exact same way in Isaac's place. He hates it when people try to tally up his baggage or treat him like he needs to open up about whatever he's carrying. But for Jacob, this is something different- something like indoctrination.

He holds out his hand for a shake. "Take care. I'll get back to you about that gun."

He looks back down to his hand and his smile grows to something more genuine. He grabs it in his own, briefly squeezing his fingers around his palm. After the talk he feels a bit more comfortable. Hell, he'd probably come duck into the armory if miss Tali starts trying to poke inside his RIG again.

"Yeah, I'll be..." He shrugs his shoulders, "Well, down in Engineering, probably, if you need me."

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Setting: Spaaaaaace!

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(( Don't worry Jacob, he's only slightly indoctrinated. Slightly. ))

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(( A+ would definitely RP again))